Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Sewing and Spinning

Do you know that throwing a 30-lb sewing machine out of the window is difficult? Not that I really tried, because even imagining it made me tired. Needless to say, my attempts to sew up little globes and start on my PhD quilt are being foiled by tension issues on my old Singer machine. At least I finally located my owner's manual, so hopefully some cleaning and readjusting will fix this problem.

Instead of reminding me of this frustration, let's talk about something that has gone well for me recently: spinning up 8 skeins of sport-weight handspun totaling over 1700 yards of yarn. This yarn is from the 1.5-lb bag of fiber my mother gifted me in May and was one of my big projects this Fall. While the resulting yarn is beautiful with enough yardage to make a sweater, I think it needs to be dyed before any knitting is done with it; a sweater in this natural color will only succeed in reminding everyone how deathly pale I really am.

So now I have to decide what color this yarn will be in addition to planning what pattern to knit. I have half a mind to design something, though we'll see if that ends up happening. In the meantime, I'm searching Ravelry for nice sport-weight sweater patterns. How I love planning sweater projects!